Warlords of Draenor - Horde Garrison Preview
Today we are taking a look at the Level 3 Horde Garrison! In these screenshots several plots are empty or not upgraded, as Chickat was upgraded to Level 3 by a bug.

Warlords of Draenor - Alliance Garrison Preview
Today we are taking a look at the Level 3 Alliance Garrison! In these screenshots several plots are empty or not upgraded, as lmarcelus was upgraded to Level 3 by a bug.

Flying in Warlords of Draenor

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We still think a 6.1 patch seems like a pretty reasonable point where flying would become available in Draenor, likely with some kind of aforementioned prerequisite. Maybe it's gold, maybe it's some kind of epic quest, maybe something more straightforward. But we're staying open to changing that post-release if it seems like it's working out really well and we want to keep rolling with it. I'm digging that there seems to be a pretty reasonable mix of beta experiences here though. Definitely looking forward to feedback when we get to the max-level content too.

Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Celestalon
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Is there a certain reason that special ability multistrike rolls are delayed (especially the 2nd multistrike roll being time dependent on the 1st), while auto-attack multistrike rolls are instant and independent?

This 0.3-0.7 second delay is problematic for Colossus Smash, as any multistrikes from the last ability in a CS window will most likely land after CS has worn off.
It's an important part of making Multistrike feel like a distinctive stat. If you Multistrike a Frostbolt, you shouldn't just see 2-3 damage numbers pop up, you should actually see 2-3 Frostbolts fly out of your hand. Or if you Multistrike a Sinister Strike, you should at least see 3 impact visuals. This naturally includes delays, so that these effects are visual.

There already is a slight delay built into the animation of whatever ability you use (time it takes to swing your weapon down to the impact point, or raise your hands to the launch point of the spell). These average around something like 200ms. Multistrikes are offset by 533ms for the first one, and 866ms for the second one.

That all describes the visual, but what about the functionality? The 200ms delay I mentioned is purely visual, it doesn't actually exist for determining damage. For Multistrikes, the caster's stats are always used at cast time (t=0). Sometimes the target's stats matter as well, and those are used at impact time (t=533ms and t=866ms, plus travel time if there's a missile).

However, the Multistrike delays don't apply to all cases of Multistrikes. Auto attacks, heals, and periodic ticks have no delay. Special attacks do have the delay.

TL;DR: Yes, it's important, and Colossus Smash is a bit of an outlier in that it has a notable impact on DPS.

Should the Thirst for Blood talent be proccing off of multiple Rends? Rage generation gets pretty ridiculous around 5 targets.
Yes, for now.

Currently it seems SR doesn't gain bonuses from Find Weakness or Sanguinary Vein. This makes sense because it's a different 'entity'. Is this intended? Should a rogues 'pet' gain bonuses like this?
Yes.

Shadow Reflection is inherently a unique situation, and we have a lot of decisions to make about what it can do and what it can't. We have to balance it feeling rewarding to the user, and not being overpowered or buggy or overly complex. A lot of these decisions are somewhat fluid, and we can adjust them based on how things play out. If it ends up underpowered for Subtlety, we may end up enabling Sinister Calling for it, for example. Here are some more current details:

- It does not currently trigger any of your procs.
- The Reflection ignores stealth requirements, but does not ignore positional requirements.
- It can multistrike/crit as normal.

This description of multistrike concerns me greatly. For rolling DOT effects such as ignite, if I understand you correctly, the following situation could occur:
No, Ignite is always rolling, and you never care about just the ignite from a single hit. You're observing the difference between the very very first ignite impact of the entire fight to every other one.

EDIT: Oh, and ignoring the damage of the Multistrikes.They add to the Ignite.

The current AT POM Pyro-chaining behavior for building up combustions utilizes "ignite tick time gaming" a lot.
We'd rather remove that obscure, unintuitive, super-precise-timing-based mechanic. We're considering the best way to do that, currently thinking of changing Ignite to be a 1sec periodic, 5sec base duration.

The majority of raiders completely ignore the numbers that they are doing
Not only is this false, it's something we're looking to improve, and it's not the only type of gameplay.

The small delay that you are using does not result in any multistrike-feel either, as they are still so closely spaced together that it feels like they instantly happen. You would have to be paying special attention to each and every spell in order to notice multistrikes (coming from personal testing, hitting the dummies for a few minutes).
Again, totally false. Regardless, this thread is for theorycrafting, not philosophy.

Has the Creature-Attack-Player crit chance formula changed at all, in WOD? It did not get posted with the previous info dumps on page 1. If it did not, is it still (5% + (0.2% * LD))? And can the base 5% be reduced by mobs lower level than you?

While on the topic of Creature-To-Player crit chance, can you explain the mechanics behind "Sit Crit", where sitting down will result in always being crit? It seems that this got half-removed in WOD, unless I did my testing wrong.
Unchanged. Sitting should still increase your chance to be crit by 100% and lower your chance to dodge/parry/block by 100%.

Theorycrafting Details for Molten Earth
As long as you have attacked something within the last 6 sec, molten stone bolts will rise out of the ground periodically and fire at your most recently attacked target.

Period is 2sec/haste. Each tick, the bolt that it fires is offset by randomly up to 4sec/haste, to create visual variety/clustering, but still average to a 2sec/haste period.

Aborts firing if the target is dead or has a breaks-on-damage aura. Can crit, can multistrike. SP Coefficient is [MasteryPoints]*5%.

Could you elaborate what you were talking about in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...47450841841664 ? Specifically, I am confused about the mechanic you are proposing and the intention/reasoning behind the change. Is the aim for it to heal less then it does (comparatively speaking, I know all healing right now is insane) now? More then it does now? Or is the goal something else entirely?
Conversion is straight up overpowered on beta right, so it's going to come down across the board. However, what I'm talking about there is the difference between specs. Frost has significantly increased RP generation rate through Frost Presence, and Blood gets significant extra RP through Multistrike. They're both balanced around that increased RP generation rate.

The idea with how Conversion limits RP generation on live is to try to equalize them by costing Frost/Blood more (by preventing their extra RP gen). However, a fair point with that approach is that it reduces all of their RP gen, not just the RP they spend on Conversion. So, we're considering alternatives. The leading one is simply making it cost different amounts for each spec, for the same healing, such as 15/sec for Frost/Blood, and 10/sec for Unholy. Don't know if those are the right numbers offhand, but something in that ballpark.

It seems that eminence dont work with multi strike. Is it intentional?
No.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Beta InformationYou guys are cranking out these builds!
Yeah, we'd like to be able to keep up this pace as much as we can. Even if a build doesn't have massive new content (new zones, etc) it will just be more current in terms of class design changes and data changes in general. Additionally, we sometimes only discover issues when a build is released to the public and we have the large beta userbase logging in and straining the servers. Sometimes that results in a less-than-ideal play experience for you folks, and while I know that can be frustrating it is very helpful for us to uncover those issues now as opposed to later on down the road.

Hopefully the newest build will clear up some of the Garrison problems, including as was mentioned earlier in the thread the Garrison locking characters inside and rarely letting them out. I haven't been able to complete any missions for days sadly.
I can clear some of this up, maybe. Despite looking like it's connected to the Draenor Continent, your garrison is actually on a different "map", in the same way that Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms are on different maps. Using some pretty fancy tech new to 6.0, we're able to transfer you from your garrison to the Draenor continent and vice versa without a loading screen, but if there are server stability issues you can be in a situation where Draenor is "down" but your Garrison is fine. When you attempt to leave the Garrison, you'll get snapped back to your Garrison because the transfer failed. (Note that even without this new tech, you'd experience pretty much the same behavior with walking through a portal).

I can't say with certainty this build will clear all that up, as you'll experience that behavior whenever a continent crashes. In reality it'll be an ongoing thing as we work to address the issues encountered on beta. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tank Specs in PvPHard to test out tanks in PVP when they are so broken right now. Unkillable gods of destruction.
So hey, about that...

We discovered a teeny tiny little issue with the Battle Fatigue debuff. Turns out, it was set to increase tank damage taken by -25%. Yes, that's an increase of negative 25%... which means that Battle Fatigue was actually reducing the damage tank-specced characters were taking.

This should now be fixed on Beta servers, which should make quite a difference. Let us know how things feel now.

RE DK Loving Blood Caked Blade for Unholy, looks great - anything similar coming for Frost?
Not really; Frost isn't supposed to favor Multistrike. That said, for that feel, Razorice is slightly similar (and has been buffed) (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Without an affordable swiftmend, rdruids are locked into refreshing harmony via healingtouch (i.e. forced to use HT once in 20s)
In the world of Warlords healing, that's expected (and very normal). (Celestalon)

Plans to re implement glyph to starfall that reduced its radius by 50%? I can see the huge range being a problem in dungeons.
Glyph of Guided Stars is for you in that situation then. (Celestalon)What about adds with small amounts of hp Im thinking like alot of adds spawn they need to be killed quickly I can't dot them all
Hurricane. (Celestalon)

As it stands, MoC is strictly superior to Germ/RG, because the later add restrictions, while the first removes them ...
Moment of Clarity is likely overpowered with current tuning. It's not designed to be "strictly superior", obviously. (Celestalon)How is MoC being op related to Germ/RG being awful talents? As long as MoC is slightly useful, you won't pick the other two...
A) If you think Germ is an awful talent, you're not thinking of all the potential situations. B) RG probably needs to buff SM. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)LnL changes: Trying it out now, I like it a lot. One Q: what happens at lvl 90, patch 6.0 with 0% multistrike?
There's at least raid buffs that provide Multistrike. Agree that it's awkward for now, but perhaps worth it. (Celestalon)

Are there any plans to making Clefthoofs and Talbulks tameable for hunters?
Still working out final implementation of the WoD families. Thinking maybe a Stag family w/deer, talbuk, MoP stags, etc. (Muffinus)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)How exactly does conjured food count as a survival ability? You never get a chance to sit and eat in arena. Debuffs don't help.
That's not what that section of the patch notes is about. Most are unusable in arenas, if you notice. (Celestalon)Most of what are unusable? Debuffs?
The sustainability section that you're referring to. They're to aid with questing and other soloing. (Celestalon)But you can't eat while in combat. Any class can get food from a vendor so it isn't comparable to sustain. of other classes.
Most of those are primarily used out of combat. And no, Mage food is better. It's for questing/soloing, as I said. (Celestalon)Mages have a lack of over time healing compared to every other class. a 40% heal from ice block every 5 minutes is underwhelming
Yes, and they're designed to *avoid* damage, not heal it back. They have burst absorbs, damage reversal, Invis, Nova, etc. (Celestalon)So are these avoidance-abilities being retuned for warlords, because right now my absorbs aren't comparable to healer ones.
Nor should they be. You shouldn't be soaking up that much damage. (Celestalon)

are frost mage mastery Icicles going to snap shot off frost bolts, or scale to the damage of a frost bolt at the time of fire
Still snapshot; nothing's changing with that. (Celestalon)will icicles scale to the current level of incanters flow or will they snap shot off a frost bolt that was buffed by flow
Icicles are based on the damage that created them. (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Are WW monks really suposed to feel this slow? im energy starved all the time with no buttons to press level 100
If you're the type of player that wants to fill as many GCDs as possible, you should favor Ascension, Haste gear, and Chi Wave. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)shadow priest self healing feels very lackluster atm. maybe have instant and in shadowform PoM back? or renew?
No, but DP is changing to cause healing equal to 100% of damage done (DD and DoT). (Celestalon)while questing, you barely get a tick of DP before mob dies. Biggest issue I had with Shadow. Healing on initial cast?
....I'm fairly certain that you just responded to the answer with the question. (Celestalon)Does that mean even the initial cast will do 100% healing of that damage and not just the rolling dot?
Ah, there's the missing link, I think. "DD" = Direct Damage. Yes. (Celestalon)

Is it intended that Clarity of Power priests remove Devouring Plague immediately after applying it?
No, you should not do that. Better to Mind Flay during Devouring Plague. (Celestalon)

Since Multistrike is supposed to be H Priest Attunement/best stat, can H Priest Multistrikes proc EoL and/or vice versa?
Multistrikes will be able to Echo. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)I can accept HS being removed. Don't like it but accept it. Still a 3 button rotation (4 w/ rare RB proc) is too much.
I question why you think RB is rare. It's more frequent than CS, even naked. With even blues it's twice as frequent. (Celestalon)

Spent a lot of time this evening playing on Fury. The 0.5sec Wild Strikes really make rage capping easy to avoid. Rage feels in your control (Celestalon)
It can definitely still get away from you if you don't pay attention to it, but you certainly have the tools to manage it now. (Celestalon)
I look forward to the feedback from people who give it a real try in the next build (day or few, I believe). (Celestalon)How will 0.5sec WS work for me, as I play with 180ms if I'm really lucky? Most of times I get 270 ms. 0.5sec going to be bad.
That won't actually be bad at all. You're not GCD capped so slight timing offset doesn't matter, plus huge responsiveness upgrades. (Celestalon)

Any thought to adding a defensive aspect to Prot Warrs' Ultimatum procs? It just seems outdated to only be an offensive proc.
They have enough defensives; it's nice to have a proc that you know you don't need to worry about for defensive value; a bonus. (Celestalon)

On the Warrior Prot: Unyielding Strikes: Will using Ultimatum consume the stacks?
The Unyielding Strikes buff isn't consumed. (Celestalon)

WS would have to massively beat out RB in DPR to compete, and at that point you'd say, "why have both spells filling the role?"
WS doesn't beat RB in DPR, but it does beat it in DPCT, handily. And if you're GCD locked, DPCT starts mattering a lot. (Celestalon)5 rage + 0.5 gcd WS? sounds painful to play with high latency.
The -25 thing was just to illustrate that it's untuned, not any indication that that's remotely correct. (Celestalon)

There are a lot of abilities requiring defstance. Is it intended that Gladstance be excluded from using them, or just not update
Gladiator Stance is for DPS, but restricted from swapping, so will likely count as both Battle and Defensive. (Celestalon)

I'm assuming like all tertiary stats, multistrike will not be in abundance so it won't be something we should bank on
Multistrike is a secondary stat, as abundant as Crit or Haste or Mastery. (Celestalon)

it's seems like pvp power and resilience build into one stat . So very awful...
PvP Power/Resilience & Versatility have a common effect but overarching design is very different. (holinka)
We didn't like Resilience because it got so large that spells felt VERY different in PvP/PvE. (holinka)
We didn't like PvP Power because it was meant to compete directly with ilevel, which led to a lot of confusion. (holinka)
Versatility is a secondary stat on PvP and PvE gear and competes with Haste/Mastery/Crit/Multistrike. (holinka)is it possible for Versatility to actually outperform other stats? ex. Frost Mastery, Subtelty Mastery etc.
Since it has damage reduction, it is tuned to not be as good at increasing damage. (holinka)up to now we've been told "not as good as your best stat". Is it going to actually be dead last, or somewhere in between?
It has benefits that aren't related to damage so it is subjective. But it won't be your first or second best stat for damage. (holinka)

Challenge ModesCM's are too item oriented, 30s tries then 10m wait for banner cd is no fun, could you either make cds reset or items unusable?
Agreed. In Warlords we'll be much more careful about which items are allowed to work in CMs. (WatcherDev)

PvEWith the removal of feats for SoO in 6.0 will this mean the Kor'kron Juggernaut will not longer drop guaranteed upon 6.0?
Slightly different handling there -- the mount will drop 100% of the time on Mythic until Draenor opens. (WatcherDev)

PvPwhats the thought behind adding those crazy pvp-only items to Ashran? variety and more action packed? some stuff of it scares me yo
."Crazy" items, spells in Ashran is an opportunity for us to "rewrite the rules" for a short time. It is about variety. (holinka)By "short time", do you mean the abilities granted are temporary, i.e. you have to find another book later?
I mean during the life of the expansion, when Ashran is relevant content. (holinka)

will skirmishes reward Conquest? So we can gear there and then do rated Arenas after?
The conquest acquisition rate will likely be slower than normal unrated battlegrounds. (holinka)

Any chance on having a window to swap specs during arena preparation in WoD? Sometimes certain specs work better against classes.
It would just end up as a mandatory ritual in arenas to bluff you opponents. (holinka)

I know low lvl pvp isn't priority, but any chance we'll ever see gear options for pvp leveling (honor purchased)?
We want to expand on it, but we won't have the time just yet. (holinka)

will conquest/honor gear have random tertiary stats on them?
We haven't come to a decision on tertiary stats and pvp gear (holinka)

PvP Gear-grind for alts will be better but still potentially tedious when facing conquest-geared opponents in BGs
40 ilevels leaves room enough to feel progression in your gearing without the gap being too large. (holinka)Think a lot of people would prefer to have less of a sense of progression for sake of alts not being facerolled in BGs
I'm sympathetic to the alt concern but I think 40 ilevels from no gear to full gear is reasonable. (holinka)
Especially when there two tiers of gear in between top and bottom. (holinka)

Curse Voice and SMITE Giveaway
Curse and SMITE have teamed up to integrate Curse Voice into the SMITE client, allowing you to quickly join a voice chat with teammates. Anyone who uses Curse Voice in game by August 31 will also get 200 free gems and a chance to win additional gems.

An Alienware X51 Desktop and more gems are also up for grabs, so be sure to enter the contest soon for your chance to win.

Weekly News Recap
It has been a busy week, so here is your chance to catch up on any news you may have missed!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We still think a 6.1 patch seems like a pretty reasonable point where flying would become available in Draenor, likely with some kind of aforementioned prerequisite. Maybe it's gold, maybe it's some kind of epic quest, maybe something more straightforward. But we're staying open to changing that post-release if it seems like it's working out really well and we want to keep rolling with it. I'm digging that there seems to be a pretty reasonable mix of beta experiences here though. Definitely looking forward to feedback when we get to the max-level content too.

The flying thing is one of those issues where it will be a big deal for months and then once the expansion launches.. by the time it's put back in players will be begging Blizzard to keep it out of the game.

I feel very conflicted about flying in WoD because it feels that WoW has gotten less immersive and kind of lazy with flying mounts. but at the same time I remember how much I wanted to explore the area above the waterfall in Human starting zone in Vanilla :O

The flying thing is one of those issues where it will be a big deal for months and then once the expansion launches.. by the time it's put back in players will be begging Blizzard to keep it out of the game.

I feel very conflicted about flying in WoD because it feels that WoW has gotten less immersive and kind of lazy with flying mounts. but at the same time I remember how much I wanted to explore the area above the waterfall in Human starting zone in Vanilla :O

Nothing lazy about flying in content you already completed.
Which will be the case once 6.1 hits and new zones (probably w/o flying again) open up.

Barren ice/desert zones such as Silithus, Tanaris, Winterspring, Dragonblight, etc. are a nice change of pace during levelling, but are an incredibly poor choice to house important features were players will be 'forced' to hang out for an entire expansion. We have all these other beautiful zones, and yet Horde players get stuck in this, ugh.

I really hope they somehow allow us to move the garrison to another zone at some point.

In addition, the whole human/orc architecture on everything in the game is getting stale. I understand doing a design for all races might be too much work, but since there's zero lore/story behind it anyway, at least mix it up a bit and use the architecture of two other races.

My Alliance alts will be very happy with their garrison ^^. The Horde one looks...ok? It doesn't have much soul to it, one can see which one the devs have more fun in creating I think.

Originally Posted by Collected

The flying thing is one of those issues where it will be a big deal for months and then once the expansion launches.. by the time it's put back in players will be begging Blizzard to keep it out of the game.

Newsflash, the blue response was made to a post created by BETA PLAYERS making it clear that they'd want flying eventually.

Your theory doesn't work. People that enjoy flying, won't forget that they do. No matter how much morons keep stating that flying is only for skipping content and lazy people, there are plenty of players that thoroughly ENJOY flying and want it for that simple reason.

Newsflash, the blue response was made by BETA PLAYERS making it clear that they'd want flying eventually.

Your theory doesn't work.

Actually that comment is kinda in the middle. A lot of us like being on the ground more than you think we do. While others... The lazier ones... want to skip fighting trash and just fly to their quest and be done with it. Being on the ground is a lot more fun than it is being put off to be. We are seeing a lot of detail, and it kinda gives you a sense that there are actually other people in the game instead of just flying around seeing empty roads.

Actually that comment is kinda in the middle. A lot of us like being on the ground more than you think we do. While others... The lazier ones... want to skip fighting trash and just fly to their quest and be done with it. Being on the ground is a lot more fun than it is being put off to be. We are seeing a lot of detail, and it kinda gives you a sense that there are actually other people in the game instead of just flying around seeing empty roads.

See my above comment. I love exploration, and I love exploration through FLYING as well. Don't put yourself on a piedestal just because you can enjoy trodding through the same content by ground 10 times and still consider it "exploring", which is the sense I get from your post and all the people claiming that flying even at 6.1 when we've explored the hell out of the zones will be just for the "lazy" ones.

I want both, a choice. Flying is no more for the lazy than a ground mount is. If you want to be really genuine, don't use a mount at all.

The posts being pro-flying in that US thread have a LOT of upvotes at that, from fellow beta players.

See my above comment. I love exploration, and I love exploration through FLYING as well. Don't put yourself on a piedestal just because you can enjoy trodding through the same content by ground 10 times and still consider it "exploring", which is the sense I get from your post and all the people claiming that flying even at 6.1 when we've explored the hell out of the zones will be just for the "lazy" ones.

I want both, a choice. Flying is no more for the lazy than a ground mount is. If you want to be really genuine, don't use a mount at all.

With a Ground Mount - You have to go through trash

With a Flying Mount - You can fly over it and not deal with a single one till you get to mission area